ABSTRACT

Between the ages of two and six, a normally developing (ND) child learns approximately 10 new words every day. The question of how children succeed in this task has long puzzled language acquisition researchers. Acquiring the labels for objects is already complex (Landau, 1994; Markman, 1994; Woodward & Markman, 1998), but learning the meaning of verbs poses even more challenges to the child. Unlike nouns, verbs do not refer to a concrete object but to events, which are typically fleeting.